


Yet in Thy Dark Streets Shineth

by Tammany



Series: Christmas, 2015 [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Grace - Freeform, Hope, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5527844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a continuation of "With Peaceful Wings Unfurled." It happens two nights later, on Christmas Eve/Morning. Mycroft, the dark, cynical, pessimistic strategiist and analyst struggles with a world in which all lives end, and all hearts are broken. </p><p>Lestrade changes things.</p><p>Grace and hope exist.</p><p>This is a Christmas story. For those who care, it's also theology and philosophy. But, then, IMO all stories are once you strip them to the white and shining bone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet in Thy Dark Streets Shineth

It was Christmas Eve…or perhaps Christmas morning.

Christmas morning, Mycroft told himself, firmly. No wibble-wobble ambiguity, Holmes—there’s enough real gray space in the world without going soft on what actually is firm fact. I am in London, and in London it is now Christmas morning.

He was in London, on the balcony of his flat, looking out over the back of the building across the roofs of London. It was two days since he’d defused a vest-bomb in the Cloister of Westminster Abbey. Two nights since he’d first made love…

Been made love to…

Had sex with, he told himself firmly. No damned wibble-wobble. If you insist on getting into the “made love” thing, and the who did what to whom, you’re never going to gain any traction. You had sex with Lestrade. Greg. DCI Gregory Lestrade. He had sex with you. A good time was had by all. We achieved lift-off. Huzzah…and all that jazz.  And now you’re sitting here on the lounger on your balcony, stark naked under a robe and a duvet, avoiding your bedroom because you can’t sleep and he’s there, and if you go in you’ll wake him up and ruin it all somehow.

It would not matter, he knew, what happened after he went into his bedroom. From the moment he crossed the threshold the rest of the night (morning, hissed his inner self)… All right, the rest of the morning would be ruined. It might be ruined because he would stand there, draped in his robe and his duvet, staring down at the modest, heartbreaking beauty sprawled awkwardly across his mattress, snoring under a crumpled sheet and blanket.

He could do that—stand and stare and tally up, detail by detail, every imperfect perfection in the man on the bed. Scars. Slight stretch marks from some period or other when he’d put on a few pounds fast, only to drop them as quickly. The greying hair forming a rough, patchy pelt from just under the divot at the base of his neck, down in a spreading tide over his chest, thinning again into a thin stream over his stomach and navel, then flaring out, dense and soft and musk-scented, a carpet around his cock and balls. Mycroft had never liked hairy men. Now here one lay, and he was resplendent in Mycroft’s eyes. The salt and pepper scruff seduced his sight, tempted his fingers to stroke and smooth, urged him to nuzzle and brush his cheek against the nap of his lover’s chest.

He could stand and stare until Lestrade woke, and grunted puzzled question, and Mycroft answered, saying something too tart, too detached. Maybe that he’d never much liked a hairy man. Maybe that Greg was a distraction. Maybe that the other man snored. All would be true, and none would say what he wanted to say, because what he wanted to say wasn’t in the words, or the observations, but in the vast, staggering lacuna that framed the details and the observations and the words.

He would speak and Lestrade would rise, hurt and angry, and would leave.

Or perhaps, he thought, huddling deeper into the duvet, staring over the rooftops, studying the surly red glow cast on the clouds by the city lights below…Perhaps he would crawl into the bed, as he wanted to do, as he longed to do, and slip his fingers over that soft, scruffy hair, press his face against Lestrade’s back—between his shoulder blades, lips kissing up the line of his spine. He’d hold tight, spooning close to his lover’s back and bum. He’d hold on like life was on the line, like every breath was precious, he’d grip until his fingers left bruises in his lover’s chest, he’d clench his hands into the fur until his nails gouged furrows and he pulled up tufts of silver and smoke hair, and Lestrade woke up swearing and afraid, not knowing how he’d ended up in bed with a man half-mad with need for contact. Lestrade would scramble away, escaping, and Mycroft would tumble into anger and denial and soon it would be over.

Or…

He shook himself. The different ways didn’t matter. Each was there, waiting to happen. A few he’d experienced before. A few he’d heard about from people he knew, from gossip at the water cooler, from stories he’d heard in pubs and on buses back in the days when he’d done field work. A few he could merely imagine—logical extensions of “where we are now.”

He was a strategist. An analyst. He was trained to see the fly in the ointment. The skeleton under the flesh. The dagger hidden behind an ally’s back. Experience and training both told him, calmly, that this would end…that it should never have begun.

He had taken his brother’s friend, his own colleague, his sometime-subordinate, to bed. They had made love, both shaking with the passion and the need and the life-hunger eating at the core of them after the music was over and the bomb was no longer dangerous and the emergency had passed. There it had been, one long, emotional evening in Advent, in the long walk up to Christmastide.

Mycroft had been drunk with it. So drunk he didn’t trust his memories of Lestrade. Had Greg been as wild, as lost, as destroyed as Mycroft had been—as Mycroft remembered Greg as being?

He closed his eyes, remembering the satin slip of a strong tongue dancing with his—the faint taste of old tobacco from a cigarette smoked hours before. The newer burn of good brandy drunk first from a glass-then sucked from Mycroft’s mouth as they teased each other into arousal. He remembered fingers cupping the back of his skull. A thigh between his—strong, firm, solid as time itself.

He turned away from the memories, eyes still shut, instead staring into the mirror of his own mind, looking at himself. In that mirror he could see every flaw.

He could see the raised mole on one cheek. The long nose. The slightness of his jaw, ending in a sharp, definite chin. He could see his hair, darkening and retreating. He could see his body, never in all his years lean or lithe or cut, no matter how he worked or starved or struggled. His hands, his long, spidery fingers. His freckles. His pale, cold eyes.

He could see his vices and his sins. He could see his every failure. He could see his solitude. His cynicism. His detachment—that which he imposed by discipline and claimed as a virtue, and that forced on him by a world that had no fondness for him, that he knew as a judgement of his shortcomings. He could see his hunger…his loneliness. His need.

Of course it would all go wrong, he thought. The statistical odds approach zero. I am not a man that many could tolerate, much less cherish.

He knew this to be true—objectively, precisely, inarguably true. Had he been challenged he could have gone to his laptop and promptly hacked his way into the very files he was not supposed to be able to access—the hidden files MI6 kept on both Holmes boys, trying to assess from minute to minute when they would cross the line from being assets to liabilities. He could pull up the psych files that laid out in cold, hard terms the degree to which Mycroft Holmes was both unlovable and unloved.

He was a fool.

He had been a fool.

He had let Lestrade in, and now he faced the deluge—the devastation of what must come.

The only real question, he thought, was whether to cut it off now, himself, or to hold on and take every second that might come.

Logic suggested he would be wiser to see Lestrade off in the morning, and not contact him again.

No—no, he couldn’t do that to Lestrade on Christmas morning, he thought. The man was vulnerable. Still flinching in ways left by his former marriage. The wife and the PE teacher and Sherlock announcing it all at a Christmas party—wasn’t that it? He thought so, though his memories of that detail were tangled in memories of fear for Sherlock and suspicion of that sly woman, Irene Adler.

Smiling and sending Lestrade away on Christmas morning was not to be thought of.

That meant doing as Lestrade had planned. Christmas together. Movies. Chinese dinner.

Another night together. The third night in a row.

He could remember the trace of Lestrade’s hands on his body—his body that so seldom was touched. Even when he’d had sex previously, he’d seldom made love.

Been made love to.

There he was again, back at the wibbly-wobbly, he thought. But he couldn’t dismiss the memories.

Lestrade made love. His hands traced praises along Mycroft’s flanks. He kissed odes into the curl of Mycroft’s neck. He sighed, and it was a love-song. He tickled and grinned and then hugged his lover close.

Mycroft, huddled in the chill night air, slipped a hand free from the duvet and wiped away tears, ashamed at how much the tenderness meant, at how terrified he was of losing it.

All lives end. All hearts are broken. All lovers leave, in time.

There is no hope of escaping that doom.

He pulled the duvet as close as he could, buried his face against his pulled-up knees, and tried to imagine the day.

Laughter in the kitchen. Perhaps a lazy midmorning tumble in the bed. A shared shower. Kisses instead of gifts—neither had been granted time or warning that they’d need gifts, so kisses would have to do. Lestrade would make him go see that new Star Wars movie—he was already sure of that. Then they’d go to Sherlock’s favorite Chinese place. Then they’d come back to Mycroft’s, and that slow dance would start again, so hot, so tender, so sweet—sex like “Oh, Holy Night” written in touches and sighs, enough to make a saint cry.

And the next morning, perhaps, Mycroft would send Lestrade away. Or he’d misstep, and Lestrade would leave in a fury. If not that morning, another morning. Or another night. Another error. Another ending.

Love was a game you couldn’t win. The nearest thing you got to victory was duration...wringing one more second, and one more second, and one more second out of the cold grip of eternity. And when did the seconds themselves die? When did love, even continuing love, freeze like the smiles on old photographs, jaws set, teeth bared, eyes desperate for the photographer to click the picture? Wasn’t it better to let go and be finished? To go with dignity and a bit of control, rather than have the inevitable forced on you?

He heard Lestrade walking through the kitchen to the balcony. Heard the door open. Heard the man pad out—barefoot.

“You should have borrowed some socks. Or found my slippers.” He knew his voice was hoarse from the battle with tears, from the desire already flooding up at the knowledge Lestrade was there.

“Not that cold,” Lestrade said. “And I can get in with you. Budge over…”

Wearily, hopelessly, he did, squeezing sideways on the lounger, opening out the duvet. Lestrade nested into the warm cover beside him, wrapped his arms around Mycroft, buried his face in the curve of Mycroft’s shoulder, and sighed easily. Mycroft, unable to do anything less than cherish him, wrapped the duvet close and bent his head until his face rested on the close-cropped silver hair.

“Missed you.”

Mycroft grunted. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmmmm.”

They clung together.  Mycroft’s arms held on tight. He stared, fearful, into the dull red sky.

“What next?” he asked.

“Hmmm?”

“What next? After Christmas. After we wake up on Boxing Day? What next?”

“Dunno. Gotta get some clean clothes, I guess. Stop off at the flat. Maybe make a run to the laundromat.”

Mycroft grimaced, but fought back a small laugh, too. “Don’t worry about laundry. I’ve got a mini-washer and drier here, and I’ve got people who pick up for me twice a week. I think we can keep you clothed.”

“Awww,” Lestrade mumbled. “And here I was hoping I’d be your naked sex slave.”

“You’re not afraid—are you?”

Lestrade squirmed. “Of what?” He nestled close and warm.

“Of…endings. Nothing lasts…”

Lestrade looked up. He frowned. “You mean that, don’t you?”

Mycroft, embarrassed in the face of Lestrade’s dismay, nodded. One corner of his mouth quirked up in irony. “All hearts are broken…given enough time.”

Lestrade thought about it, frowning. Then, slowly, he said, “That’s so we have a fair chance.”

Mycroft frowned. “What?”

“It’s like—it’s like a kind of grace,” Lestrade said. “If it didn’t end—if there wasn’t a cut off point…” He struggled, and swore softly. “Look, if it goes on forever, it never means anything. It turns to gibberish, like a sentence that never stops, yeah? I dunno about eternal life—I don’t know about the whole after-life thing. But I know about living. I know that here, and now, this is it, and victory isn’t living forever—it’s living now for all its worth. If you die with your hands full of life, you won.”

Mycroft blinked. “I…”

“No—shut up a minute and listen. If you think winning is never getting hurt, or never taking a stupid risk and losing, or never feeling anything awful—well you might as well be dead already anyway. And even if you think it’s hanging on to the good stuff, you can’t do that unless you reach out and try.”

“And if you lose?” Mycroft shivered, and held tight. “WHEN you lose?”

Lestrade said, easing back down like a cat settling into a comfy lap, “Then if you’ve got even one good memory, you won. It’s what you were born for, yeah? Life’s gift.” He sighed happily, and dropped a kiss on Mycroft’s shoulder, through his robe. “I think it’s what they call ‘grace.’” And then he was snoring, softly, evenly.

Mycroft didn’t let go.

Tomorrow, he thought, he’d make breakfast for Lestrade. And he’d watch Star Wars with him, and eat Chinese food with him, and make love to him. And if Lestrade was right, that would be a victory.

That would be grace.

And according to Lestrade, even one grace was enough. Every grace won was a gift and a blessing, and what he’d been born for, to carry into the final ending with him, intact.

And that, he thought, is grace.

Then he, too, slept.


End file.
